


dead on arrival

by Slie



Series: dead on arrival [1]
Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Excessively Bloody and Nekkid Dream Sequences, Gran with a Plan, M/M, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, aoba is the poster child for How Not to Treat Your Headmates, blue-haired guys are not reliable narrators, dubcon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:54:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 12,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slie/pseuds/Slie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all of Aoba’s sympathy for the maniac, he doesn’t seem to give a shit about the third of him that is trapped in the back of his own head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. side one

 

It’s not like he expects anything different, anymore. But seriously, there’s only so long you can try to sleep on an imaginary beach in the imaginary sun without getting _really fucking tired of it._

He’s had sand literally fucking everywhere by this point. It’s disgusting.

(Also, Aoba’s clothing choices are so shitty and inappropriate for his mindscape. Sly stays nude for practicality, not because he thinks the meatsuit is really that awesome.) 

For all of Aoba’s sympathy for the maniac, he doesn’t seem to give a shit about the third of him that is trapped in the back of his own head. 

 

—

 

He sleeps as much as he can. Aoba might not realize it, but now that he’s not in danger and has settled back into his life, the barriers keeping his Desire back are stronger than ever. 

Who needs Ren when your self-denial is that strong? Not Aoba, that’s for sure. 

“Yeah, yeah, ‘he’s me’. That’s great. That's so great. So _do_ something about it,” Sly says. He kicks the sand. 

Nobody hears him. 

 

—

 

Sly breaks, really breaks, about three weeks after Platinum Jail. 

 “Let me out! Let me out, damn you,” he curses, and somehow slices his skin open punching and kicking the wall of nothing that Aoba is holding up.

Aoba notices nothing, obviously.

“Fuck you,” Sly screams. Over and over again. “Fuck you, fuck you!”

His voice drowns out the ocean for minutes, hours, days. It takes a long time to go hoarse. It's not like he has actual vocal chords to get irritated, anyway. 

Nothing happens. Even the red tinge to the sand fades away after a while. 

He wonders if his self-inflicted wounds bleed over to Aoba at all. If he's getting phantom pains or something.

It'd serve him right, the bastard.

 

—

 

At this point Sly's not even that mad at Ren, not anymore. Good on him for getting out when he could. Must be nice to have a sense of autonomy.

...Well, okay, he's still a little pissed. But that's just because of Restraint's personality in general. And it's kind of pointless to hold that kind of grudge when Ren still thinks he's a fucking Allmate, which is still just as pathetic as it was in the beginning.

Huh, there's a thought. Could he transfer himself to an Allmate? Or even wake Ren up?

He'll have to think about it.

"It's not like I don't have time," he says, and grins to himself. It's not funny at all.

 

—

 

Well, he was going to think about it. But.

There's no sense of time here, not in the back of Aoba's head.

The next time he gets any sense of awareness, Aoba's sulking in Heibon and Noiz has been gone for months.

...Too bad. The sex was pretty awesome, even from a distance. 

Sly doesn't really care. Might even feel a bit gleeful. Hey, why not? It's not like what Aoba's feeling really compares anyway, to being trapped forever on the shittiest beach in the universe.

 

—

 

Noiz comes back eventually. The sex is still awesome.

Whatever.

Sly tunes it out after the first five minutes. 

 

—

 

...It's been another month. He's pissed. And tired of being pissed.

"Fuck you," he says again.

There's no heat behind it.

 

—

 

If nobody wants him to exist, then why the hell does he have to?

...Drowning himself is a no-go. He wakes up again on the beach, with sand in places he'd really rather it not have ended up.

Damn it.

 

—

 

Almost exactly two months after Aoba accepts Noiz's offer, the headaches start again. Sly isn't even sorry for it. 

 

 


	2. stuck in the jet wash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aoba has terrible coping mechanisms and even worse alcohol tolerance.

Amazingly, it isn’t Noiz who comes up with the idea of getting him drunk. As soon as the headaches come back, Aoba sets out to distract himself by any means possible. Well, any legal means. 

…It wasn’t a good idea. But it was a convenient one.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, at least.

Noiz doesn’t say anything when Aoba insists on drinking way too much alcohol, but Aoba’s sure that he’ll pry it out later. He always does somehow, and it’s usually really really embarrassing. (He’s not holding a grudge for the blindfold-and-water incident. He’s _not._ )

It doesn’t stop him from downing an extra shot and staring at Noiz challengingly, trying not to give away the faint pounding behind his eyelids. The other man frowns a little, but doesn’t interfere. 

In hindsight, Aoba should have remembered that alcohol lowers inhibitions, not the other way around. Just as things start to get pleasantly warm and he thinks he can relax, the pain suddenly intensifies.

He doesn’t notice the glass falling over, or the mess dripping all over his pants. There’s just pain, pain—

His head is splitting.

He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, it’s splitting apart, oh gods—

Noiz freezes from where he was pouring his own drink, eyes going wide. 

Aoba's eyes slam shut.

 

—

 

 _Finally,_ Sly thinks.

What kind of weirdo gets drunk to escape his base instincts? It doesn’t work that way at all, Aoba should know that. What the fuck?

…Well, whatever, may as well enjoy it.

He probably won’t make that mistake again anyway.

 

—

 

Sly gets back into touch with the body fairly quickly.

…Huh.

Being drunk is weird.

It’s not bad though. And- wait, there you go, the rabbit-head is staring at him.

“What?” Sly says, because if he can talk he’s damn well going to speak first.

“You look different,” the guy says. He looks calm. And annoyingly devoid of piercings.

Sly can see why Aoba complains about that fucking default face so often. He says so.

The maniac just tilts his head. “Aoba?”

It’s not a question, just an observation. Great, the only conversation Sly gets in months and it’s a monosyllabic rabbit freak.

There’s an easy way to improve that.

“Not according to him,” Sly says. It’s not bitter at _all_ , and he shoves his way in to kiss the bastard before he can talk back.

It takes a minute or so for him to get pushed away. Sly’s a good kisser, okay, even without the added benefit of tongue piercings and whatever the fuck this guy used to have going for him.

“Aoba-“ he manages to choke out, face a little red.

“—isn’t here right now, so let’s have some fun already,” Sly interrupts with a snarl, leaning in again.

Rabbit-head tries to say something, opens his mouth.

It’s not that hard to shut him up.

 

They can’t go all the way before Sly fades back, and he’s not really into the whole rape thing anyway, so they stop with some heavy kissing. Noiz is panting a little, lips cherry-red. It’s a good look on him. Sly grins and tells him that, and earns an irritated face.

So that mask can be cracked after all. That’s kind of satisfying. It feels good.

Sly is all about feeling good.

 

…All the good feelings in the world don’t change the fact that Aoba got them _really fucking drunk,_  though. He passes out pretty soon after that.

Aoba can keep the hangover. It was so fucking worth it.


	3. a rivalry goes so deep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naine told Aoba once that “good things come to those who wait.”  
> Another one of his shitty useless platitudes- Sly doesn’t believe a word of it.

Aoba has a glorious hangover when he wakes up. Sly’s hanging so close to the surface that some of the ache bleeds over, but it’s totally worth it just knowing he’d had the chance to come out and mess with the maniac a bit.

“That was almost better than that one time with Mizuki,” he mutters to himself, and snickers involuntarily. That had been a fun day. Mizuki never managed to get the stains off the bar counter, either.

 

—

 

Three hours and eight useless attempts at hangover cures later, watching is a little less entertaining. It was great to come out for a bit, sure, but the relief only lasts so long.

Sly gets antsy again pretty quickly, and amuses himself with a running commentary on whatever the hell he can see through Aoba’s obnoxious mental wall.

Aoba, true to form, suspects nothing. He’s still pretty firmly in denial about his migraines. Well, having a hangover is a pretty good excuse for a headache.

It looks like the rabbit-head didn’t tell him about Sly’s little debut.

…That’s pretty interesting.

He’d like to ask why, but that’s hard to do from in here. Aoba doesn’t look to be getting blackout drunk anytime soon, either.

So this requires patience. Sly can be patient.

Seriously, he _can._

 

—

 

Just because Sly has a shit ton of experience with waiting doesn’t mean he’s actually all that good at it. He’s more about the whole instant gratification, living in the moment sort of lifestyle. It’s more fun that way.

He’s spent most of Aoba’s life sitting in here with his thumbs up his ass, but that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Naine told Aoba once that “good things come to those who wait.” Another one of his shitty useless platitudes- Sly doesn’t believe a word of it.

 

—

 

At one point, the barrier weakens enough while Aoba’s working on Ren that Sly can peer out a bit. The Allmate body is getting pretty fucking old. It wasn’t much of a piece of work in the first place, hence why it was in the back of a freaking dump.

He wonders what would happen if Ren broke down. Would he come back to Aoba? Would he disappear?

Would Sly?

It’s the kind of thing that would keep him up at night, if he actually had control of a body that was affected by that sort of thing.

“Aoba, are you all right?” Ren asks, somewhere in the distance.

“Yeah,” Aoba says.

“No,” Sly answers, and proceeds to curse out the universe when Aoba’s walls come up again.

A lot of the threats involves smashing Ren’s Allmate model to bits. He’s only maybe eighty percent serious.

 

—

 

He could probably pull Ren back into their headspace if he used Scrap. 

It’d be tough to use the power on part of “Aoba,” sure, but it’s not impossible. He's stronger than Reason at least, and Restraint barely had enough skill to move into that body in the first place. 

…No, that’s better to save as a last resort. As great as it feels to destroy things, Sly isn’t as trigger-happy as Aoba (and Virus and Trip, the fuckers, Sly's going to kick their asses to hell and back if he ever gets the chance) seem to think he is.

“No wonder you’re so good at getting over hurdles,” he mutters to Reason. Who still isn’t listening, apparently. “You jump to conclusions so damn much, you’re a fucking pro.”

There’s too much of a chance it could go wrong, and it’d be a pain to be stuck forever as a drooling husk.

Almost as much of a pain as being stuck here forever, but hey, it’s a difference.

 

—

 

Noiz keeps giving Aoba strange looks when he thinks no one is looking. It’s slowly making Aoba paranoid (that’s what he gets for hiding his damn headaches and shoving himself headfirst into denial) and Sly thinks it’s fucking hilarious.

Either it’s because of him, or Aoba’s ass is just that awesome.

Aoba hasn’t stepped into a gym ever and it’s not like they’re getting a shit ton of exercise lounging around Noiz’s apartment like a really weird pet cat, so it’s probably not his ass.

…Well, okay, the bastard really likes Aoba’s body so some of it is probably their ass. But Sly would like to think that’s not the only reason.

It’s not like he’s gotten the chance yet to go and actually ask.

 

—

 

After a few days of oddness, Noiz suddenly goes back to normal and stops with the creepy staring. Aoba lets out a sigh of relief. 

Sly wonders what the hell the rabbit fucker is planning this time. 


	4. the kids aren't alright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Noiz had a plan, but they both get a little more than they bargained for.

With Aoba’s barriers as strong as they are, Sly is left to stew in his own juices for a while. It’s as annoying as it ever was, so he dreams up a stick and fills the beach with crude images of what Noiz and Aoba are probably up to.

If Restraint- well, Ren- were here, he’d have gotten a swat upside the head for that. Apparently drawing stick figures of people fucking is “disrespectful.”

That’s kind of the point.

With that kind of enthralling activity to keep him busy, it comes as a total surprise when the barriers actually fucking _drop._

It’s not like they shatter or anything. Aoba’s not broken or under attack, he can tell. But.

One moment he’s alone, and then Aoba is _on the fucking beach with him._ Standing right on top of stick-figure him and Noiz doing something unspeakable and anatomically impossible.

“Uh,” Aoba says. His eyes are wide and he sways a little, flushed.

He’s drunk. He won’t remember being here later, or Sly might take the chance to slap some sense into him.

He should stay here. The rabbit-head is probably planning something.

 

…Fuck that. This is too good to miss.

Sly takes control of the body anyway.

 

—

 

He comes to in their house, on their bed. He’s not tied up and he still has all his clothes, so there go about half of the scenarios he’d been drawing.  Aoba had better appreciate them anyway.

There’s no spilled drinks or anything and no glasses, not even a shitty party cup. How the hell did Aoba get this drunk?

“…Hey.”

The asshole is holding a bottle of…. something. Their vision’s too blurry to make out what, exactly. Alcohol? Straight from the bottle?

Sly’s a little impressed.

“You’re different again,” Noiz says.

“No shit,” Sly snipes, and tries to sit up.

Uh. Bad idea. The world spins a lot. He crashes back onto the pillows.

The maniac lets out a noise that sounds a little like a laugh.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sly says. He stretches out on the bed, careful and testing, and makes himself comfortable.

Their shirt rides up a little. He hopes Noiz gets distracted by it. That would be more interesting than this shitty excuse for an interrogation.

There’s a clink from the side table and the bed creaks as the rabbit-head slides onto it. He doesn’t look drunk at all, the bastard. Sly tells him that accusingly.

 “Why are you different?” Noiz asks. Sly makes an irritated sound. Being ignored rubs him the wrong way; he’s had way too much of that already.

“You pulled me out just to ask why I’m different? That’s fucking boring.” 

Like hell he’s going to cooperate just like that.

“Unless you’re gonna do something interesting, I’m going back,” he says. He wants to be out, yeah, but this is bullshit and being drunk makes the body fucking useless anyway.

“Wait,” the guy says. Sly grins at him, wide and slow.

“What? You wanna fuck or something?” he asks. Noiz ignores the vulgarity and leans in, grabbing his arms.

“I said wait,” he says. Sly waits. Then he gets bored and rubs up against the body holding him.

“You’re so hot when you’re commanding,” he says low and taunting, and laughs at the flush he can see spreading across the maniac’s cheeks. Success.

The brat’s pretty determined, though.

“Were you the one who beat me in Rhyme?” he asks. “Back then.”

Sly pulls a disgusted face and flops back against the pillows.

“Jeez, so persistent. Well, fine, what if I was?”

“And Akushima? You stopped him too?”

“Hell yeah,” he slurs. He flashes his teeth at the thought.

“So you come out when he’s in danger.”

Sly stares. Then he laughs, and laughs, and laughs. He laughs until Noiz is leaning even closer over him, brow creasing and eyes narrowing in something that might actually be worry.

Maybe it’s the alcohol, but he wants to punch that look right off his face. He grabs the back of the rabbit freak’s neck and forces his head down instead, in some weird parody of an embrace.

“Hey--!”

Noiz struggles a bit, but even drunk, Sly is stronger than he is.

“Shut up,” he snaps, and Noiz goes still. Like a rabbit. Heh.

“I don’t do _shit_ ,” he hisses down at the maniac, and gets a small protesting sound when his grip tightens. “Aoba’s the one that forgot, and Ren, and when I’m shut in the back of our fucking brain I can’t do a fucking _thing_ because nobody fucking wants me! 

"No, wow, its terrible that the rabbit fucking boy toy is trapped in his head, let’s fucking forget about Desire trapped in our fucking head doing the same fucking thing! But hey, we'll let him come out when he needs to Scrap someone. Because that's fucking _useful._ “

His eyes are watering. Fuck. It’s the alcohol, just that. He presses Noiz harder against his chest, trying to keep him from saying anything else. His voice comes out smaller than he expected.

“Why the fuck do I have to exist if nobody wants me?”

Fuck. He doesn't want to be here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The working title for this was a really terrible Kingdom Hearts joke. I was going to have drunken Aoba on the mindscape beach stumbling around trying to use the stick Sly found as a microphone.  
> "Aoba, that's a stick."


	5. fame < infamy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he's too green to be feeling so blue.

Noiz is quiet, too quiet, at Sly’s muttered question and his shivering attempts not to cry. The only sound in the room is Sly’s rough breathing and the shudder of his body against the plush bedcovers and feather-stuffed pillows.

They’re way too fancy, like everything the rabbit-fucker keeps in this shitty house.

Sly suddenly wants _his_ bed back from when _he_ had control, when he’d crash at Mizuki’s bar and run roughshod all over Midorijima learning the limits of his newfound power. From when he had something of his own.

He had a knife in his boot and Ren at his heels and a safe spot to lick his wounds when he had to, and everywhere else was a fucking battlefield where no one could ever beat him.

Sly wants it back.

…Fuck it. Coming out tonight wasn’t a good idea.

“Hey,” Noiz says. Sly twitches at the interruption.

“…what.”

“What are you?” He can almost see the maniac’s face just from the tone of voice, as flat and neutral and ‘I don’t give a fuck’ as he knows the blondie can make it. Which is a lot.

That’s it. He starts laughing.

The asshole manages to break his grip at that, probably thinking he’s gone insane or some shit like that, but Sly doesn’t really care. Aoba is probably already insane anyway, and this is hilarious. This is fucking hilarious. This whole damn thing is hilarious and Sly’s the only one who knows enough to appreciate it.

“Great fuckin’ question,” he says in between snickers. He can hear the slur in his voice, knows his control is shot- but who cares. It’s not like self-control is all that important to him anyway. Not like he had much in the first place.

This is great. Aoba can try to hide in denial, but Sly can shoot that to fucking pieces and all he has to do is tell the truth.

It’s a great time to black out.

“Why don’t you… ask Aoba…?” he manages to croak out. Everything’s blurring out, it’s kind of hilarious. Well, no, screw ‘kind of.’ It’s totally hilarious.

“Hey-!” Noiz seems to catch on and raises a protest, like complaining’s gonna keep Aoba’s body from passing out after all the alcohol he’s had. Sly laughs even harder.

“Better luck… next time… princess,” he says. He falls back into his head, still grinning to himself.

It feels like drowning.

 

–

 

Aoba’s still there when Sly manages to get back to the beach, exhausted from pulling himself together from the not-space that sits between their mindscape beach and whoever’s controlling the body. It feels like limbo. It’s nothing and everything all at once, and it’s utterly disgusting.

Reason’s wandering around like a sleepwalker, all long limbs and long hair, not even aware of what he’s doing. There’s sand all over him, like he’d fallen and gotten up without bothering to clean himself off. That’s gross too. What an asshole.

Sly wonders what it’s like to live with that little self-awareness. How the fuck are they still alive, with this guy driving the body?

…Ren. Right.

No wonder Aoba was so obsessed with living a safe little life with a safe little job at a fucking junk shop, he wouldn’t have survived five seconds otherwise. What a joke.

 

–

 

He doesn’t bother to try and talk to Aoba while he’s dealing with his hangover. It’s not out of mercy, it’s just that there’s literally no reason why Sly would want to take over and let Reason get out of dealing with dehydration and alcohol hell. He can get used to the headache all by himself. Since he’s not letting Sly out, he’s going to have plenty.

Besides, he’s getting enough sympathy from Ren anyway. Sly scowls at the furball as he trots into Aoba’s room, all cute fluff and gentle reminders for Aoba to take care of himself.

“Hey, Ren,” he calls boredly, “you’re a piece of shit.”

Ren’s ears twitch. What?

Sly stands up. He’s not trembling. He’s not.

“Ren? Ren, you fucker, can you hear me? Ren.”

Aoba’s drinking a glass of water, wincing. Sly can see Ren through his eyes, when they’re open. They’re not open much, but it’s enough.

“Ren. Restraint, don’t fucking ignore me. Ren!”

Another twitch. Ren tilts his head, furrows his furry eyebrows. Aoba, finished with his drink, asks if he’s okay.

“It’s nothing,” Ren answers in that fucking mechanical voice of his. The walls come up, and Sly screams in a fit of impotent rage.

“ _REN!”_

 

–

 

The thought comes to him again, while he’s sitting by himself, scraped and bloody from railing against the barrier once, twice, a thousand times. Again.

_I want to destroy._

_I want to destroy, I want to destroy. I want to destroy._

Does Ren remember? Does he remember standing here, all tall righteousness before he even had a form other than Aoba’s childish body, trying to warn Reason and Desire away from anything that could put them in danger? Does he remember being one?

Is he really strengthening the barrier? Can he hear Sly screaming?

_I hate you._

Did he hear him?

_Destroy. Destroy._

_I hate you. I hate you._

Why are he and Aoba doing this?

_Destroy. Destroy._

Why does Ren get to stay out there? Why does Aoba get to stay out there, control the fucking body all by his fucking self, why can’t Sly?

Why does he have to exist if he can’t do anything?

_I want to destroy._

The barrier’s still up, invisible and omnipresent.

_If you’re trying to destroy me, I’ll just destroy everything._

–

 

It seems like an ordinary morning to start with. Noiz is in the kitchen, getting a drink, and Ren is cajoling Aoba into getting up.

Then Ren drops. Noiz doesn’t have time to even turn around, barely has time to register the soft thud and Aoba’s shocked exclamation before Sly goes for it.

Aoba goes down screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Sly's defense, he's been though a lot...?  
> Anyway, it's finally time for things to get interesting.


	6. be careful making wishes in the dark dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sly looks up at him, gaze wild and poison-gold, blood on his lips and murder in his mouth. Noiz can’t believe his eyes.

 Noiz spins around when he hears the scream, almost drops the glass of water he’d been filling. He barely has the presence of mind to put it down before he’s sprinting for the bedroom, one hand where Usagimodoki would be if he’d actually had time to put on any clothes.

His mind is racing through scenarios like so many lines of code, _what if what if what if_ sparking through his brain like lightning, like a fire, like a glitch. It only takes a few seconds for the house to go silent.

Then he skids into the doorway and comes to a complete stop.

Yellow eyes look up at him from the floor where Aoba was holding Ren, hands still half in dark fur and half in blue hair. There’s blood on his lips, and his body is too thin and feral and tightly wound to be anything like Aoba.

Noiz has only ever seen this being loosened up by alcohol, sprawled over plush bedcovers or arching cat-lazy and hot against him. This is totally different.

Sly Blue looks up at Noiz, still shivering his way through the pain, and smiles wide.

“Huh,” he says. His eyes are bright. “Can’t believe that actually fuckin’ worked.”

 

–

 

It hurts. It really fucking hurts.

Sly remembers pain. He knows it inside and out, even enjoys it sometimes, but this is way the hell beyond that. When the barrier shatters in his fit of rage, it’s excruciating. His vision doesn’t go white so much as it vanishes completely.

Then he’s on the floor and there’s fur at his fingertips and there’s a sick metallic burn that means his nose is probably bleeding. That hasn’t happened since that first time he overextended himself with Scrap, messing around on the Rhyme field outside Mizuki’s.

It takes a moment for him to remember how to breathe and another to work past the strain in his throat (damn, he thinks, Aoba really can scream outside of sex). He ignores the tears in his eyes enough to grin up at the doorway, pretending his vision isn’t blurred half to hell.

There he is. Rabbit-head in all his startled glory. His bedhead is fantastic and- nope, he’s not wearing a shirt. Nice. Maybe it’s meant for Reason to enjoy, but Sly definitely appreciates the view as his vision starts clearing up.

“Huh,” Sly manages to rasp out, going for bravado. “Can’t believe that actually fuckin’ worked.”

Noiz is less amused.

“What did you do?” he says. It’s not really a question.

Interesting. He’s pretty pissed off.

“What, you don’t like it?” Sly says. He lowers Ren’s empty body to the ground, not really paying attention to it. “I think it’s an improvement.”

The rabbit fucker almost growls at him. Heh.

“Where’s Aoba?”

“I’m right here,” Sly says. It’s not a lie. He can actually count the seconds as Noiz almost considers it before glaring at him again.

“You’re not Aoba,” he says. Sly wrinkles his nose.

“Rude,” he says, mocking Noiz a little bit. Aoba’s seen the guy at formal functions enough times, always gets a little turned on by the rabbit trying to restrain himself and act all proper. _Rude,_ Noiz always mutters to him, _they’re so rude, it’s disgusting._

“Rude,” Sly says again. “I’m Aoba. Can’t you see me?”

“I’m saying you’re not Aoba!”

Noiz takes a step forward, trembling. His fists are clenched. If Sly weren’t in the body of his precious fucktoy he’s pretty sure the guy would try and punch him.

Anyway, that was uncalled for. He’s been here from the beginning, he’s always been Aoba. So Sly narrows his eyes and lunges, taking the maniac by surprise as they topple over. He does his best to bash Noiz’s head against the doorframe as they scrabble on the floor, but the rabbit is uncharacteristically on the defensive.

Fucking Aoba has made him soft. When he fought before, he was a lot tougher than this. Sly’s a little disappointed.

He manages to say so in between rough shoves and the rabbit-head’s shitty attempts at punches, giving up on the possible concussion and settling for pinning Noiz against the ground instead.

“You’ve gotten weak,” he says, close to Noiz’s ear, close enough to bite it if he wanted to.

Noiz responds with a valiant attempt to kick him in the crotch. Sly should give him a gold star for trying. This would be pretty boring if there wasn’t some murderous intent involved.

It takes another few seconds, but Sly finally gets him properly pinned. He can’t wipe the grin off his face, feeling it splitting his face in half as he stares down at Noiz triumphantly. The brat is breathing hard, face flushing red.

“Are your senses going again? Don’t I feel like Aoba?” Sly asks, almost flat against him. “Isn’t this Aoba’s voice?”

 

–

 

Noiz stares up at the guy holding him to the floor, up on his elbows so he can look down at the blond. His features are almost alien, almost inhuman- with that light in his eyes and his almost immovably feral posture, he looks nothing like Aoba. He could maybe pass as Aoba’s older brother.

…No. Noiz stops that thought. It’s not true, and he hates lying to himself. He looks exactly like Aoba, that's the problem.

For all the violence and complete lack of logic this guy has, he’s surprisingly not that threatening. His voice is… weird. It sounds like Aoba’s did that time in Rhyme, almost. And his eyes may be narrowed in a challenging glare, but he still looks like he’s about to cry any moment.

“Isn’t this Aoba’s voice?” the guy asks. From his personality he’d probably break Noiz’s nose if he brought it up, but he sounds almost pleading.

Aoba doesn’t beg for anything, not easily, and not disguised under questions and insults. This can’t be him.

“No,” Noiz says. “You sound different.”

And it’s the truth, but he can’t help but regret it when he sees Aoba’s face crumple above him.

 

–

 

“I’ve been here from the beginning,” Sly snaps, forcing his face back under control. He’s not weak like Aoba. He won’t cry. “I remember more than Aoba and fucking Ren, even, doesn’t that give me the right to be ‘Aoba’?”

The rabbit fucker’s face goes slack with confusion.

“Ren?” he asks.

Sly’s happy to oblige.

“Didn’t you know? The three of us, we-“

_That’s enough._

He staggers, loses strength. Noiz takes the opportunity to throw him off.

_Stop this, Desire._

Sly clutches his head. No, no, no-

“I won’t go back,” he rasps. He’d kill Aoba first.

_You can’t do this to Aoba._

“Shut up, shut up, Re-“

The world fades out, and Sly falls into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is every chapter going to have a pretentious FOB song lyrics title?  
> Yes.


	7. pretty sly for a blue guy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything Aoba lacks, he makes up in denial.  
> (Ren is precious. He doesn't wonder why. He doesn't usually need to think about a lot of things.)

The world’s all wrong.

He doesn’t remember blacking out, but that’s not unusual after getting drunk. His head’s killing him, but that makes sense after he’s been drinking too.

(It’s been hurting for a while now. He doesn’t have Tae’s pills to make it go away.)

Sometimes it’s better. Talking to Ren makes him feel better. Ren is safe. Ren is precious.

He doesn’t wonder why. Of course Ren is important. Ren is as important to him as his own life. That’s not something he needs to think about.

Toue is gone, and Noiz is here. He doesn’t usually need to think about a lot of things.

 

Then the world cracks, and if he thought it hurt before, that’s nothing on this. It’s blinding, it’s dizzying. The world’s flashing and fading and crackling all at once. It’s too much to hear, too much to see.

It comes in a flood, all at once. His throat hurts.

Aoba is drowning.

 

—

 

Ren is drowning.

He’s used to information. Can handle it- buffers here, circuits there. A steady monitor of vitals, in case of injury. A database for online mode, for Rhyme and interfaces and attacks. A side stream of data to monitor total capacity, in case there’s too heavy a data flow for his ancient processors to handle. The uplink to Aoba.

Aoba.

Something is wrong with Aoba.

Something is wrong with him.

It doesn’t feel like Rhyme. He can’t feel the illusory networks under his feet, the affirmation from the system of life and defense and opponent.

…He can’t feel much of anything.

Then there’s sand under bare human feet, and the world’s all wrong.

 

—

 

It takes him a while to recover, to reintegrate and acknowledge all his senses again.

His first thought is: this place is familiar.

It’s not the way it looks. No beach in the real world looks like this. The sea is too pure, the sky too blank. The waves are too regular, too mechanical to be anything but a memory of a memory. A fake. No real beach has sand like this, crusted and metallic and red with old blood. It crunches beneath Ren’s feet, squishes up between his toes.

His human toes.

This isn’t my body, is his second thought. Then: no. It must be. Why?

The third thing he thinks is: I’m not an Allmate.

Allmates don’t take their own forms. And his rendering doesn’t have toes; there was no need for it, and it saves space to simply have boots instead. Allmates don’t find things familiar. They have data or they don’t.

But this is him. He takes a step, testing, then another. There’s a few lines drawn in the sand by the water, half-washed away and impossible to read.

The sand is covered in glass as well as blood. Ren stops walking, overtaken by the odd and dizzying sensation of drowning.

Then he starts running. There’s a body in the water, out at sea.

 

—

 

Aoba wakes up when Sly passes out. They both come to screaming, Aoba in fear and pain and Sly in agonized fury, but Ren stands strong against it. Takes a little of the hurt, as best he can, buffered by memories of Rhyme and taking hits and enduring for the eventual win.

Aoba curls back against him even before he’s aware, and Ren lifts him up as much as possible. Away from the glass and the blood and the water that’s still soaking his hair and his naked body.

Sly doesn’t mind the glass. By the time he uncurls, mere feet away, he’s already bleeding from a dozen scratches. Ren can feel him hoarding the pain like a jealous lover, cradling it somewhere deep in his chest before it reaches Reason or Restraint.

Restraint. That’s what they used to call him.

It feels strange to remember.

 

—

 

Sly recovers first, of course. Ren is unsurprised.

“You,” he snarls, all terror and fight and fury. Ren remains impassive in the way that machines are impassive, looking at this third of him with a sort of distant understanding.

“You can’t do this to Aoba,” he says.

“Fuck you-“

“Desire.” Ren cuts him off. If he lets Sly have his way with this, he could scream for hours and hours, feeding himself on his own anger. They don’t have time for that.

“The barrier,” he says, and knows that Desire understands. And watches himself hug himself, a knot of muscle and bone. A child.

His hair is so very white.

“You wouldn’t let me out,” Desire says. Aoba stirs between them.

“I did not remember,” Ren responds, and gets a snarl in response.

“Bullshit! Fucking-- you raised the barrier!”

“I did not remember,” Ren says again. Implacable.

This is a little familiar. The unbreakable sword, the immovable shield.

“You raised the fucking barrier on me, you piece of shit!” Sly’s on his knees, fists pressed carelessly against the ground. Adding to the blood that stains the sand here. Ren has an idea, an inkling as to why the sand is so red in this place.

“I did not remember,” Ren says again. He bends a little over Aoba.

And because all good fairy tales happen in threes, Aoba finally comes to himself.

 

—

 

It takes a long time to try and explain what’s going on. Ren with his shameless puppyish nakedness, damn near holding Aoba in a bridal carry despite Reason’s embarrassed noises. Sly, as pale and colorless as the day they were born, railing against the both of them, half covered in his own blood.

Aoba’s denial cuts sharper than any glass. Ren can almost feel every protest hit home, can see the almost defiant way Desire rolls more of his weight on his knees, his bleeding hands, his legs. Onto the remains of the barrier he broke, slicing himself open again and again and again.

It’s not beautiful or tragic. It’s ugly, trying to cover an emotional pain with a physical one. It’s disgusting, and Ren can guess how long this has been going on for.

So much of the beach is stained so very red.

“I’m you!” Sly snarls for the hundredth time, helpless and murderous in equal measure. Aoba shivers. “I’m Aoba! You can’t fucking keep me here!”

“I’m Aoba,” Reason says. “And I won’t let you hurt anyone.”

They’re both arguing for the same thing, but Ren is only Ren. He doesn’t know how to fix this. This isn’t something he can reconcile.

“You can’t fucking deny I exist! You can’t fucking deny me the reason I was born!”

“Well, then I wish you were never born!”

 

…There’s a long silence, huge and horrible and gaping, after that.

 

—

 

The world's all wrong.

It reminds Sly of those movies he and Mizuki would watch, in the old days. Shitty horror films, imported, the worst they could find. They’d try to one-up each other and show worse and worse terrors until neither of them could sleep for the nightmares.

The streets were never as terrifying as the abominations dredged up on film. Massive footless monstrosities with too many shadows and wide, huge, gaping mouths where mouths weren’t meant to be. He and Mizuki spent almost a week jumping at every shadow, half afraid of being eaten.

It makes him sick.

He’s Aoba. He always has been.

Aoba despises his very existence.

“…Fine,” he says. His voice breaks, and Aoba flinches.

“Fine?” someone parrots, and he can’t tell if it’s Reason or fucking Ren. His vision is spinning.

“I’ll do it. Just give me this one thing,” Sly tells them. He closes his eyes.

“…This one thing?” a voice parrots. Aoba then. Ren can’t pull off that particular tone of confused denial, he’s got a stick way the hell too far up his ass for that.

Sly takes a deep breath. It feels like the glass and sand and sea got inside him, slashed up his lungs and tangled up in his throat. He’s choking on it.

“Lie to me," he says. His voice doesn't break this time.

Desire is drowning.

 

—

 

“Lie to me,” he says again, when nobody answers.

His voice is horrible. It makes Aoba’s chest hurt. He curls into Ren a little more, skin to skin. He wants it to go away.

“Lie to me,” Sly says, “and I’ll never take control from you again.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my defense, hospital visits and physical therapy and college are all individually good reasons for not updating. All three of them at once merits a bit of a wait.


	8. red von denial (lie to me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> will you fade on your own? he almost asks. can you just turn away and let me go?

"Lie to me," Sly says, "and I'll never take control from you again."

There's silence again- but more raw, more aching. The air is wet and heavy with tension, stinging Ren’s eyes with illusionary seaspray and salt.

Ren doesn't know what to say. Doesn't know what to do.

They all know what Desire is asking. Ren can feel it like a tremble underneath his skin, a subdermal rumble that echoes back to him in the sound of the waves, in Reason’s shaking heartbeat.

This is wrong. This is so very wrong.

Aoba stirs in his arms.

"...Lie to me?" he parrots, blank and empty. Uncomfortable. Confused.

 _You’re still in denial,_ Ren could tell him, if he would only ask. But Aoba is not very good at knowing when to ask the right questions.

Sly just watches him, waiting for Aoba to choose. Like he always has.

It isn't Ren's place to think so. But the part of him left over, the part that was never contained by being an Allmate- it pities Desire, just a little.  They are the same person, after all. 

"No more headaches. No more destruction. No more fucking escape attempts. Hell, I won't even talk to your little boy toy again.

"Just one fucking lie. And I'll give up."

Aoba frowns. He's thinking hard.

 _Good_ , Ren thinks. _Think about this._ _Please, Aoba._

"How can I believe you?" he asks. “All you ever do is destroy.”

It's the wrong question, the wrong thing to say. Desire tilts his head back and laughs, an ugly broken cackle sharp as glass. Restraint shudders back reflexively, can feel Reason doing the same thing. It's not a good feeling.

"You don’t ever believe me anyway. But you don't have anything to lose with this," he says.

Ren finally steps in.

"You have everything to lose, Desire," he says. Another shift of weight betrays Sly’s unease; his lower body and the bottom portions of his hair look to be more blood than man, now.

"So?"

"Why give up now? Why let Aoba go?"

Sly smiles at the both of them, bloody and bitter and broken.

"You heard him," he says. "It'd be better if I was never born."

He doesn’t say it, but Ren knows the rest.

“I can’t go back either,” he says. “The Allmate is broken.”

Aoba flinches. Ah, Ren thinks, he didn’t know. It should have been obvious to him from the beginning.

“Desire. You have what you wanted,” he says.

 

—

 

They can’t take anything back in this place. Aoba knows it, can feel the truth of it sealing his lips as soon as the words escape his mouth.

If that guy weren’t here, he could be happy, right?

If he didn’t have this power, everything would be okay, right?

 _Noiz is still alive because of him_ , a traitorous thought whispers, but he ignores it. All his ‘Desire’ can ever do is destroy.

“Lie to me,” the other him says, and Aoba thinks his voice could make the air bleed.

It sounds good. Except.

Ren can’t go back.

Aoba scrambles to his feet, swatting away Ren’s support. The sand hurts his feet, makes him wary of putting his weight on them. It makes sense, for a place created by something that only wants destruction. A ruined world for someone who would raze all of Midorijima to metal and ash and dust. 

He towers over the other one now, lets his anger and fear flare up hot and bright.

“What’d you do to Ren?”

Sly bares his teeth at him, delighted. Aoba hates it. That grin looks more like a snarl than a smile, and his face looks all wrong. It’s disorienting.

“I didn’t do shit. He’s from here first.”

“The Allmate broke,” Ren corrects him. Arms wrap tightly around Aoba, taking some of his weight.

“It’s a shitty model anyway. We found it in a trash can, for fuck’s sake.”

Ren doesn’t bother to deny the accusation. “It served its purpose.”

“Yeah, the purpose of annoying the fuck out of me.”

“You appreciated it in Rhyme.”

“Maybe I like ordering you around. Gives me a nice view of your ass.”

“Stop it!” Aoba snaps, trying not to think too hard about that last comment. Ren sighs, a deep low rumble against his back.

“Aoba. I can’t return to my body. My soul- the fragment of your Scrap within me- was all that kept it running.

“Should you try to use it now, you will not find me. I cannot go back to it.”

Aoba feels like he’s been punched.

“What…?”

 

—

 

Reason looks terrible. Sly would be pleased if he didn’t feel like even worse shit than the other one looks. His legs are pretty much shredded.

…Seriously, Aoba doesn’t have to make that face, all weepy and fucking ready to cry like it’s the end of the world. He looks like a kicked puppy, more than Ren ever did.

“Stop crying, fuckass, it’s not like he’s dead.”

“ _Desire._ ” Ren’s dulcet tones, disapproving as always.

“You don’t get to talk, dogbreath. He’s giving me a fucking puppy face.”

Ren sighs again, all tired martyrdom and stoicism. Sly lets out a bark of laughter at the sound, suddenly just as tired, suddenly ready for an end.

“If it means so fucking much to you, get that boy toy of yours to buy another Allmate. Fuck knows he can afford it.”

Reason actually perks up at that, the little shit. Sly cuts him off before he can say anything.

“Make up your fucking mind before the rabbit fucker takes our body to the hospital and you have to wake up with a catheter up your ass and a bunch of doctors trying to fuck you over.”

Aoba makes a face at the idea. None of them like hospitals.

Ren makes the same face, but with more disapproval.

“It would destroy the balance,” he says.

Sly laughs at him.

“There wasn’t any to begin with. He finally won, that’s all.”

Reason seems to settle at that, deciding. Sly can feel the electricity beneath their skin, the building power, the destruction of everything.

“Desire,” Aoba says.

And Sly grins at him, lets his yellow eyes turn sharp with Scrap, grins with his blood still between his teeth; smiles and lets him tear himself to pieces, lets him have that.

 

—

 

Aoba’s so still. It doesn’t look right. It’s not even like he’s sleeping; it’s like he’s dead.

Noiz would’ve gone for the first aid kit, but it’s not like there’s anything he can do. Aoba’s pulse is steady, he doesn’t have any wounds or injuries, and his breathing is fine. Once the nosebleed was cleaned up, that was it. He should be back to normal.

He should have woken up by now.

Noiz looks at his Coil, remembers the Tower, and makes his decision.

 

—

 

“You’re me,” Aoba tells him. “I need you.”

It’s a knife between his ribs, a punch in his gut, a bomb in his stomach. It’s a mouthful of acid, cutting away his ability to breathe. It’s as much destruction as he could ever hope for.

Sly drinks in the pain, smiles, lets it kill the memories, bleeds away into the limbo between nothing and nothingness. Remembers Sei doing the same thing. Lets himself drown in Aoba’s denial, kneeling at his Reason’s feet. Reaches out with one steady, bloody hand.

And Aoba destroys him.

 

—

 

“Granny.”

“Noiz? …You sound upset. What’s wrong?”

“I’m bringing Aoba to you. I’ll bring medical supplies, so don’t worry about that.”

“Wh-“

“ _Call ended! Call ended!”_

“Get me tickets to Midorijima. Now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...Whoops.  
>  (How many lyrics from the title song can you put in one chapter? Apparently, a lot.)


	9. bright eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bright eyes, he breathes in the middle of the night, how could you close and fail? how could you turn so pale?

Aoba doesn’t wake up slowly. He comes to all at once, suddenly aware of his own skin and the breath in his lungs and his heartbeat in his throat and-

It’s over. It’s over.

He breathes. In, out, in.

There are sheets around him, not sand. The blanket pulled up to his chest is lighter than what he’s used to. Cheaper, thinner. The air doesn’t smell of salt and blood.

The light is blue. Nighttime, he thinks, except night in Germany in Noiz’s mansion of an apartment is pitch-black and heavy, speckled with harsh gold from the city lights.

The world is blue. He can hear breathing, slow and even, and the hot line of a body next to him.

It’s nighttime, he thinks, in Midorijima.

Desire is gone. Ren isn’t here.

Aoba doesn’t open his eyes.

 

—

 

The next time he’s aware of himself, there are voices.

“ _Pi!_ Aoba is awake, pi!”

The blankets are warm, and his body is so heavy. How early is it?

“Aoba.” 

Trying to roll over results in an awkward tugging at one hand, and someone captures his wrist. He doesn’t bother to shake it off.

“Aoba. You awake?”

“Mmf. Leggo…”

“Hey.”

“Five more minutes…”

An exasperated sigh. A hand over one ear, brushing away his hair.  A whisper.

“Aoba, you’re late for work.”

He’s too tired for this.

“…lemme sleep.”

A startled noise. Aoba tries to burrow into the pillow, frowning. It’s very soft.

He’s so tired. There can’t be anything worth getting up for, right now.

“Aoba.” Another voice. “Aoba, open your eyes.”

Cool hands, pulling his face to the light. He squints against the brightness, a whine building up in the back of his throat.

“Granny… ‘m tired.”

Aoba is met with silence.

 

—

 

Noiz’s first thought is this: Shieße, Aoba’s eyes are _gone._

(They aren’t actually, he corrects himself afterwards, but it’s close enough.)

Aoba’s irises are pure white, with only a faint rim around the edges and black pupils to show that he even has eyes instead of some horror-movie approximation. It’s pretty horrifying anyway, he thinks.

Noiz remembers Aoba’s usual gold, remembers the burn of Sly Blue’s glare and the terror in his eyes as he passed out.

It’s like there’s no one home now. Smoke and ashes, rather than the fire that burned so brightly, the light that led him back from everything. This can’t be him.

(He needs to stop thinking that. This is Aoba. He knows that as surely as he knows the ID numbers of each cube of Usagimodoki, as well as he knows the sun rises in the east and that curling his fingers in the curve of Aoba’s hip still makes his lover blush. He knows it as well as he knows anything.)

Noiz feels a little sick.

“Aoba,” Tae finally says, voice small. For once she sounds as old as she really is. Her hand trembles against Aoba’s cheeks, weathered fingers catching in his hair.

“Aoba,” she says, “what have you done?”

Aoba curls into himself a little, somehow managing to bury himself even further under the blankets. Noiz keeps a hold of his hand, making sure he doesn’t tug on the IV line that Tae had set up.

“Used Scrap,” he manages, and yawns. “m really tired…”

“You’ve been asleep for three days,” Tae says.

“What happened?” Noiz adds, because hell if he’s letting Aoba sleep his way out of this conversation.

The story comes tumbling out, in bits and pieces and fragmented comments that take all of Noiz’s fairly significant brainpower to piece together. Tae doesn’t seem to have much of a problem following the thread of Aoba’s rambling, going pale and shaky in a way that has Noiz itching for his Coil, twitching his fingers to run discreet statistics of shock and heart attacks for the elderly in the corner of it.

By the time Aoba’s done, they’ve managed to coax him into a vaguely upright slouch, the three of them making a lopsided triangle in Aoba’s mess of a room.

It’s confusing as hell, but Noiz gets the gist of it. Aoba is three people, Ren is one of them, and he just destroyed the other one.

Noiz is hardly an expert on how people work, but destroying a third of your psyche doesn’t sound like a good thing.

He’s brought back to reality by Aoba fiddling with his IV.

“Can I take this out, seriously? I’m fine, just-“ he yawns, “really tired…”

Tae is implacable. “Talk for thirty seconds without yawning and you can.”

“Granny!”

She hmphs and stands up.

“I’m going to make dinner. Noiz, make sure my idiot grandson doesn’t strain himself.”

Aoba has the grace to blush a little when Noiz eyes him in mock contemplation. It’s interrupted by yet another yawn.

“Take a nap,” Noiz says. “I’ll wake you up for dinner.”

Aoba is all too happy to comply.

 

—

 

They stay at Tae’s place for a month, and it doesn’t get any better. Aoba is exhausted, listless, reluctant to eat or drink or do so much as get out of bed. Just getting him to take a shower is an exercise in persistence. 

Tae tempts him out with his favorite meals, bullies him into eating when he doesn’t respond to that. Noiz distracts him with lessons in German, with shitty movies and games and whatever else works. 

(Kissing is not one of those things. Aoba's libido is pretty much gone, and Noiz is too worried about the other things to make too much fuss about it.)

They order Ren’s new model, which despite all the custom options on the market ends up being not much more than an updated copy of his old one.

“It’ll take a while to get here,” Noiz says afterwards. “It’s a totally custom model, and we’re out in the middle of ass-nowhere on top of it.”

Aoba makes a face, but nods. It’s not like there’s anything he can do about it.

 

—

 

 _Depression,_ Tae says to Noiz while Aoba is sleeping, quiet and serious. _Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid._

 _Stupid?_ Noiz asks, keeping his voice down more from habit than from necessity. It’s hard to wake Aoba up, these days.

_Whatever he might do without the desire to live._

Noiz thinks about the Tower, and agrees.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's probably going to be a sequel, by the way. Not that you guys need to worry about that yet, we've got a good amount of story left to go.


	10. out from under

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it’s like the world’s been yanked from beneath his feet, and he’s still drowning.

This is Sly Blue in his last moments: blood and white like bone, feeling the wet-warm damp of his own blood soaking through the ends of his infinite hair. It smears across his torso when he moves, messy and bright.

At any other time he would be enthralled by the red and the life of it, so contrary to anything else in this mockery of a place. This fake paradise in between a dream and a nightmare.

_Look at me, Reason. I can bleed._

He reaches for himself standing over him, some final tiny remnant of the Desire he’s made of fierce and hopeful and _destroy, destroy, destroy everything, even me_.

Desire reaches for himself, and Aoba destroys him.

 

—

 

Their hair didn’t turn blue until they had their own existence. Then Aoba’s eyes turned yellow like the sun, and his hair took on the blue of the sky and the ocean that became his earliest memory. The memory of his name.

When the three of them talked to each other, after that, they all looked the same. Only Reason’s eyes were the darkest of them all, and Desire’s eyes the fiercest, and Restraint’s eyes as pale as his power was weak.

Then they were older, and Reason nearly interchangeable with Desire, and Restraint became Ren and his tall adult body would tower over the both of them in their mind. Sly laughed at him for it, until Ren pulled he and Reason apart in one of their spats over the blond twins ( _we’re not twins,_ they always said, and Sly always scoffed at them) and Sly busied himself cursing the universe for letting Ren be stronger than him.

Then Aoba forgot. And Sly screamed himself hoarse and dyed their mind with blood.

His hair stayed blue as the summer sky, even then, even when he never stopped fighting.

 

—

 

He slips through the cracks even as he can see Aoba waking up, Ren curling in on himself in an attempt to restore the barrier that maintained some fragile sense of order on their mind.

Never mind that the barrier only held back Sly, that it had to be reinforced with Tae’s medicine and Morphine’s drugs and Aoba’s denial. Aoba has drawn his conclusions, all of him, and it’s two to one and not in Sly’s favor.

It’ll be better now, without Sly to destroy and ruin things. Without Sly existing.

Then the pressure increases and there’s nothing, nothing at all, and he’d scream if only he had something to scream with and Sly Blue

                                                               finally

                     breaks.                                                

 

—

 

By the time they met Noiz, the tips of his hair were white. It’s not that he’d given up, but more that desperation is not an unlimited resource. Sly can wait, had waited for years and years, but he’s not as endless or infinite as Reason thinks he is.

Toue’s little robots and their weird-as-fuck music were like a blessing. Reason had to step back for a bit, to let Sly do what he’d learned to do best.  Little moments of freedom and adrenaline and destruction, all the more alluring for how short they were and how quickly he was caged away again.

But desperation is a single-minded desire.

Even forgotten, Sly’s made of more than that.

 

—

 

He’s always hated limbo. The space in between controlling the body and hiding under conscious thought is viscous and slow, a clinging _lack_ that wraps him up in trailing strings of numbness and nothingness.

It feels a little like death, or what the space after death must feel like.

Even when he’s practically living there, unwilling to give up any chance to take control from Aoba, it still scares him.

Sly hates being afraid.

 

—

 

When he met Sei it wasn’t so much a conversation as a passing glance.

Sly was torn between forcing his way in front of Aoba and confronting this strange being invading his mindscape, flashing his pale face and dark eyes on every screen in Toue’s admittedly high-tech office. The fierce giddiness of escape and freedom warring with something like curiosity and something like fear.

They didn’t meet in Aoba’s headspace. They met somewhere else, all white floor and empty sky. Sei looked like they did in the beginning, gorgeous and black and white and not a trace of blue.

 _Brother,_ he said, whisper-soft. He smiled a little, small and serene and devoid of any sort of happiness.

It made Sly’s bones ache to see him without any color of his own, or maybe that was just the knowledge that had been Scrapped into him. A brother. His brother and someone Sly could have protected if he only even knew he existed.

His brother who acknowledged him.

He’d have held Sei close if he hadn’t been sure that doing so would leave the man with broken bones.

 _Who did this to you?_ he wanted to ask, but he already knew. He’d tear this building down to its foundations if Sei weren’t already doing it on his own, found himself baring his teeth with the protective fury of it. He wanted to tear Toue to pieces with his bare hands.

 

The Scrap was over before he even thought to say goodbye.

 

(Aoba was running with Noiz to safety, his mental barrier back up with the strength of his will to live. The power of gay love and adrenaline, Sly thought to himself with something like resigned amusement.

His hair grew just a little whiter with the loss and loneliness of it.)

 

—

 

Death is empty.

There is no barrier here, because there is nothing for him to be barred from and no him to be barred from anything.

Does he have a name? He might have had a name, once. He thinks.

He doesn’t like it here, in this stifling nothingness, this artificial womb. He knows that much. Or does he? What is there to dislike? Why does he dislike it?

It would hurt if there were anything here to hurt, he muses. Can he hurt? What is hurt? What is it like?

If only he knew. If only he could “hurt” then there would be an escape.

If he could feel hurt, then he could go on existing. That’s right, isn’t it? Someone felt that way, a long time ago.

Who is he?

Who was he?

 

—

 

When the barrier broke down it sounded like thunder, and Sly was the poor asshole getting hit by lightning.

It hurt. It hurt a lot.

Half of him was trapped under the falling barrier and screaming, and half of him was kneeling on sand bleeding his life out on it and screaming, and half of him was reaching out through the void to tear Aoba from the front of their mind and screaming, screaming with him, because breaking himself free hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced.

He was breaking under the pressure and breaking free all at once, and looking up at Noiz with iron and copper in his mouth and the freedom that used to be a high all on its own left him trembling under it.

Then Ren dragged him back down (kicking and screaming and angry, so angry, _again_ ) and his hair was white and white and streaked all the way through with blue.

Then there was Aoba, and red.

Sly thought about Sei, white and black through and through and no color in the whole of him. Thought about Sei dying and fading, and then the only color left is the red that’s dying his mind from the ground up, from the inside out.

It would mess up the balance, Ren told them, but there already wasn’t any left. Sly was broken, breaking, pouring his lifeblood and color out on the sand of the beach they got their name from and Aoba didn’t even seem to care. Was too scared to care, too tired and in pain to give a fuck about the guy he shared an existence with.

So he took the fall for it, let Aoba destroy him.

(There wasn’t much left to destroy, anyway.)

And if he was weak enough to reach out at the last moment, to look for some little solace in really truly running himself to destruction- that’s nobody’s business but his own, and nobody's left to care.

 

—

 

Death is empty, and Sly Blue is still breathing. 

 

(“Hell is empty,” Noiz read to them once, “and all the devils are here.”)

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, guys! (My partner Bucky guilted me into posting this early, you can thank him.)
> 
> Anyway, you didn't really think I'd killed the main character off, did you?


	11. rabbits are roadkill on rt.37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aoba can hate himself more than anyone. This time, they have a plan.

Noiz asked Aoba once why Ren didn’t take over their body.

(It was a sensible question, he thought. Ren was supposed to take care of Aoba, right? Never mind his suspicions about _Sly’s_ purpose; Ren at least should be doing his job.)

Aoba looked baffled for almost a full minute, long enough that Noiz was starting to get concerned. Then he grinned, lax and wry and insincere.

 _He’s too weak to come to the front like that,_ he said. His smile drooped a bit. _He isn’t like me or Desire were-_ _he can’t usually take over, and he doesn’t really want to._

 _So what does he do?_ Noiz asked.

Aoba paused at that. _Keeps the balance, I guess. Or he did._

Noiz couldn’t think of an answer other than _yeah, great job with that_ and he’s never been crass enough to kick a man when he’s down, so he let it go. Aoba does a good job at spiraling into self-damnation on his own, anyway.

So Ren is meaningless now. That’s kind of shitty.

…Aoba really fucked up, this time, didn’t he.

 

—

 

It takes weeks for the Allmate companies to process Ren’s new body, and then another week when the shipping gets mixed up and it ends up somewhere in the Sahara instead of Midorijima.

Aoba droops and loses weight. Noiz contents himself with leaving scathing reviews in German and Japanese and English on all of the company websites, funding a small startup that specializes in human-form Allmates, and roaming Tae’s house like a caged wildcat until she kicks him and Aoba out and they have to hide at Mizuki’s bar.

(Human shaped Allmates are becoming more popular, he defends it to himself, so it only makes sense to invest in their development. And it is a good business move, but it’s also for Aoba.

He doesn’t really think Ren will be satisfied with being a dog anymore. Not for long. And there's other things to think of.)

 

—

 

This isn’t something Noiz can fix.

He figures this out pretty quick, but it takes him the first month and then some to come to terms with it.

He can’t fix this, can’t troubleshoot or look for errors in Aoba’s code. He doesn’t have mystical magic powers to erase Aoba’s mistake or make things better or destroy the problem.

This isn’t the Aoba he fell in love with. That Aoba who lived and sparked under his touch is gone. Maybe he’s not ever coming back.

This Aoba is a dead thing, tired and flickering down to embers. A dull char over what used to be full of life, full of fire. Static and noise over what used to be a stunning orchestra.

This is his Aoba now.  Noiz does what he can.

(He loves him. It never feels like enough.)

 

—

 

His eyes have a little color left. Sometimes, on his good days, when Noiz looks closely- there’s gold in his eyes, pale as sunlight on marble, pale as dawn. As pale as hope, but still hopeful.

There's still blue in his hair as it grows longer, pale and delicate and sure. 

They can live through this.

Their hope is pale and slim, but they can live.

 

—

 

The day Ren’s body arrives, Tae wakes Noiz up a little early.

“We need to talk,” she says. If this were Aoba Noiz could joke about breakups and bad love songs. But this is Granny, so he follows her silently to the kitchen and feels the cold morning floor through sock feet while she makes coffee.

“The Allmate is arriving today,” he says when she places his mug in front of him. She snorts and settles down on the other side of the table, nursing a coffee of her own.

“That grandson of mine… He can’t survive without someone taking care of him.”

Noiz takes a sip of his coffee instead of answering. It tastes pretty good. Granny makes strong coffee, complaining that whenever he or Aoba attempts to make it that it’s too weak.

( _It’s like sex in a canoe, stupid grandson— fucking close to water_ , she’d snapped at Aoba, and he was frozen for a full five minutes in pure shock at Tae’s language. Noiz spent those five minutes doubled over in laughter. His sore stomach muscles were worth it.)

They spend the next three hours talking, low and serious. Tae quizzes Noiz on Oval Tower, on what little he remembers of being Scrapped, and he questions her in return on Aoba and her research and Toue’s ambitions and the lab she worked in.

( _Aoba had a twin,_ she reveals reluctantly. She doesn’t know what happened to him.)

The coffee pot is emptied, filled, then emptied again.

They’re still talking when Aoba stumbles in, disoriented and half-dressed and ruffled with sleep.

“That package of yours is in,” she tells him. “Wake yourself up and go get it.”

To Noiz she says: “We’re going to get my grandson back.”

“All three of him?” Noiz asks, voice wry and dry as Aoba stumbles over himself in his hurry to get through his morning routine.

“Obviously,” she says. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

 

—

 

Aoba returns with Ren padding at his side, tired and pleased. For a moment it’s almost as though nothing has changed, like Noiz is visiting and they’re still in the lazy days after Oval Tower, before Noiz took them to Germany and Aoba broke his mind to pieces.

“Sit down,” Granny tells them. “You too, Ren.” And she tells them her plan, the strategy she and Noiz have spent a month creating and this last morning going over.

They’re going to use Scrap again. On Aoba, again.

But it won’t take place in Aoba’s mind this time.

The theory is pretty simple. Noiz has been Scrapped before, Tae explains, so he should have a trace of Aoba's power. If they use his mind as a template, they should be able to call back Sly and patch him back together into some form of coherency. 

Ren agrees first, and Aoba follows.

 

—

 

“Are you sure about this?” Aoba murmurs to Noiz while Tae bustles around setting up medical equipment, hooking them up to monitors that neither of them knows the function of.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m doing this because I love you. Every part of you,” he explains, and Aoba blushes and flails, and that is that. 

“Thank you”, Ren says while Aoba is distracted, and Noiz gives him a nod of acceptance.

The Scrap is pretty anticlimactic, when it comes down to it. Aoba puts his hands on either side of Noiz’s face like it’s just another day and just another embrace.

Noiz ends up not hearing what he says, caught up in the swirl of dark behind his eyes and the sensation of falling.

It feels like drowning.

 

—

 

If this is the inside of his mind, that’s kind of sad. For a moment he thinks he’s lost the ability to feel again; there’s no sensation, no light, nothing to distinguish from itself or from him.

_What is this place?_

He almost voices his thought, out of habit, but catches himself. Words have power in Scrap, Aoba had said, so be careful with them.

 _nothing nothing nothing nothing_ the darkness answers anyway, nonexistent voices thin and childish in his ears. It eats at the edges of his awareness, persistent and serene. It’s a shiver down his spine, a primal fear he thought he’d left behind with his childhood and its locked doors and its little terrors in the night.

He remembers Mizuki, broken and looking far too small. Thinks about Sly, the few times they’ve ever met. (He thinks about Aoba’s eyes and the death in them.)

 _nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing,_ say the voices in the dark.

Don’t think too hard, Tae had told him. Say what feels right.

He smiles a little, alone in the familiar pitch-black, and then he speaks.

 

—

 

“Es werde Licht,” Noiz says. _Let there be light._

And the darkness—

                                                breaks.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (to the tune of Captain America)  
> ♫ A Graaaaan with a Plaaaaaan! ♫
> 
> Next up, the Scrap chapter. You guys will get to choose the ending that comes after that. Just saying.


	12. novocaine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he's numb, he's numb, he's his own worst nightmare.

The world turns into a thousand pieces, and Noiz can see every one of them. He’s Sly Blue destroying a man for the first time, he’s Aoba on the beach with sand between his toes, he’s Desire in a dark alley with Mizuki guarding his back and his anger is a sucker punch, a knife to the gut, a bomb about to blow.

(He’d say it all happened in a blur, but everything is all too sharp for that. It’s falling glass, it’s shrapnel, it’s a hail of bullets and if he was numb before then he is breaking now.)

He’s pounding on a locked door as food slides through a slot, tearing his hands to bloody shreds and wrapping bandages around them. He’s bleeding out on an imaginary beach and pounding on a barrier that’s everything and nothing and pressing on his skin until he screams.

He’s slipping drinks to Aoba until his eyes turn yellow with Desire, he’s arching up against himself with laughter and anger and denial.

He’s little and there’s screaming and blood and bone, incomprehensible and gruesome and devoid of pain. He’s tall and thin with his own fury and laughing with the discovery of his power, of freedom and destruction and the fierce predator delight of it.

He’s 10 years old and wrapped up in soft clothes and bandages and he can’t, he can’t- he can’t feel a thing, and he screams out loud and claws at himself with the helplessness of it.

He’s 24 and dying and he feels the same.

 

—

It could be a day or a century, but the world turns white and Noiz’s mind eventually starts to resettle itself.

Sly Blue stands in front of him, naked and pale as the day he was born with black swirls and spirals over every inch of skin.

“What the fuck,” he says, and Aoba laughs.

It’s not a sincere laugh, and for the first time Noiz can hear that in every breath of it.

“Nice plan,” Desire says. “I could destroy you right now, you know?”

But Noiz can hear the waver in his voice, the dip and shake of it. He shakes his head.

“You won’t,” he says.

“I almost did already. Aoba’s fucking weak.”

That’s not Aoba’s fault, Noiz wants to snap back at him, but it kind of is. So he keeps his mouth shut.

Sly laughs again, more honest this time, like he knows what Noiz is thinking.

“So what happens next?” Noiz says instead, beating Sly to the punch before he can say something scathing.

_(be careful)_

The other man smiles at him, small and wicked and promising.

“You haven’t remembered yet,” he says. Noiz stares back, face the blankest it can be.

“Remembered what?”

_(i said danger)_

“Your destruction,” Desire tells him.

The world goes black, and Noiz forgets that he doesn’t have to breathe.

 

 

**┍—————————————————┑**

**    do you want to feel even better   **

**┖—————————————————┙**

 

Chains and static and distortion. Code and concrete, as part of him as dying and being born. 

 

**┍—————————————————┑**

**    do you want to sleep? **

**┖—————————————————┙**

 

A voice, warped beyond recognition like a signal constantly cutting out.

 

**┍—————————————————┑**

**   can I not wake up? **

**┖—————————————————┙**

 

Blue hair falling into his eyes, dyed white with loss and hate and hopelessness.

 

**┍—————————————————┑**

**   what about him? **

**┖—————————————————┙**

 

Yellow eyes, burning brighter and hotter than the ones he used to know.

 

**┍—————————————————┑**

**    who are you? **

**┖—————————————————┙**

A voice he knows, should know, doesn't know. 

 “That’s--“

 

—

 

When he surfaces again it’s hard not to clutch at his chest, to stand there and gasp for air he can’t have, to rub his wrists for the shackles that aren’t on them. Noiz sinks to his knees, fingers shaking where they’re clenched in fists above his knees. He loosens them, spreads and smooths his palms over his skin in reassurance that it’s all still where it should be.

Desire is laughing above him, tall and bright and delighted. Noiz wants to punch him in the face. He wants to hold him and never let go.

He wants-

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Noiz almost flinches back when Desire puts his hands to his face. His palms are as burning hot as Aoba’s were cool and cold. It’s intimate and somehow terrifying.

“Do you get it yet?” he asks, yellow eyes fierce and searching and pleading. Like there’s something he won’t admit, that he can’t say without falling all to pieces.

It’s all Noiz can do to stare blankly up at him, still almost lost in the chains and the static and the dark, numb with shock and the ache of being swallowed whole. There’s a sound that could be a laugh or a sob and Sly shoves him down on his back like the day Aoba destroyed himself, flattens them both down and buries his head in Noiz’s chest, clings to him like a man afraid of drowning.

He’s been drowning for so long, Noiz knows now, that he’s hardly afraid of it.

“Tell me,” Desire pleads, voice breaking like a fever against his skin. “What happens now?” 

He can feel the light around Desire sinking into his bones, trembling beneath his skin. They're out of time.

 

**┍——————— **—** **—** **—** ————┑**

**    you have to go back    **

**┖——————— **—** **—** **—** ————┙**

**┍——————— **—** **—** **—** ————┑**

**     I don’t decide that      **

**┖——————— **—** **—** **—** ————┙**

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In an attempt at keeping with the DMMD style, there's more than one ending to this sequence. depending on the choice that happens during Scrap. I'll upload all of them, but I thought I'd give you guys a chance to pick (kind of) which one gets put up first. 
> 
> Edit: Amazingly, no one wants the bad ends. They'll be posted separately B)


End file.
